Website speed - how to measure it? 7 useful tools

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Website speed - how to measure it? 7 useful tools

One of the most important factors affecting a website's position on Google is its speed. How can we check if a website is fast enough? What tools should we use for this purpose?

Page speed is now one of the factors in Google's rankings. Fast-loading websites achieve better search engine rankings, but also have a positive impact on the user experience. The first impression of a user is very important - if a page freezes or loads very slowly when they first come across it, we approach it with caution. Especially in online stores, this is important because customers don't want to buy from free stores - what if the store freezes while they're shopping? Website speed also has a big impact on the so-called bounce rate. This is a parameter that determines how many people leave the page after entering only one subpage. If your site is slow, many people will close it without waiting for the content to load.

So, what if (using SEO activities, advertising, landing page blocking) we attract a customer if they are annoyed and close the slow website as a result? One second is an eternity for an Internet user who wants to have all the information they need right away.

Knowing that page speed affects not only to Google's position in the rankingbut also on the user experience, we present tools that will allow you to check page speed on your computer and on mobile devices. It is worth noting that speed on mobile devices even more importantthan on computers. You should take the "mobile first" motto to heart and make sure that your site is not poorly readable on the mobile devices that most users use.

Page loading speed: what should it be?

The answer is simple - as soon as possible. It is impossible to "go overboard" with this issue. In general, the recommendations are that the page did not load for more than two seconds. Each additional second is a higher failure rate. To avoid this, we present tools that will help you evaluate how fast our website is performing. Many of them will give us recommendations on what can be changed or improved to make the website run faster. You should follow these recommendations, but don't forget to monitor how the speed parameter changes after the changes are made. This should always be done using the same tool, as different tools use different measurement methods. Зhe use of the same instrument at all times increases the reliability of the test.

Measuring page speed: tools

1. Google PageSpeed Insights

Created by Google to check the speed of both mobile and desktop. It gives tips and suggestions on what to do to improve and how to do it. The tool uses a point scale from 0 to 100, and the higher the index, the better. Above 85/100 is very good.

In addition, Google PageSpeed Insights provides UX recommendations. PageSpeed Insights is available at: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights.

2. GTmetrix

It's a simple tool that gives you the option to get a premium plan - although the basic plan is enough to check one page. It shows, among other things, the total page load time, page size, and the number and description of requests. This data is presented in the form of graphs that make it easier to understand the information GTmetrix offers. Beginners will understand it quickly and easily because the tool is very intuitive. It is considered by many to be one of the best because it gives what some consider to be the most realistic results. This tool also offers interesting additional (paid) options, such as video recording of page loading. The disadvantage of this tool is that we get in a queue to perform the analysis. If we are right, we will analyze it in a few moments, if we are wrong, we can wait quite a long time.

GTmetrix offers several ways to check page speed - one from Google's point of view, the other from Yahoo! Each of them has recommendations that make the website score what it is.

3. YSlow by Yahoo

Yahoo's YSlow scans the components of a page and checks the page's loading speed based on that. The data it receives is presented in graphs and charts. It adds which areas require, for example, the intervention of a website administrator. By clicking on individual errors, you can see suggestions for solving them. This tool works as a plugin that can be used in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari.

4. WebPageTest

It evaluates website speeds using current browsers from different locations around the world, showing real-time connection times. It shows valuable information such as: performance diagnostics such as images of the initial page load, resource graphs, and suggestions for improvement. It checks the page three times and then displays the average result, so the test takes longer than other tools. However, the data is very accurate, presented in the form of graphs and screenshots.

In the case of this tool, we also have to stand in a queue, which further lengthens the measurement time. You can also specify whether it is a survey for mobile or desktop devices. The site survey is divided into several categories. You can get a score in each category. When you click on it, statistics and an explanation of why a particular site received this or that rating appear.

5. DareBoost

It is an advanced tool for testing website speed, as well as monitoring network performance and fully analyzing a website in terms of speed, SEO, and security. 5 scans per month for free. It is enough to optimize your website. It makes it possible to display and check what technologies have been used on the website.

After clicking on the arrow, we get an explanation of why this aspect is important for the site.

6. Impact of the load

Load Impact offers 10 tests per month for free. The premium plan, which costs $119 per month, gives you unlimited website testing. The test consists of generating artificial traffic to the website and then testing how the website responds under this load. The site is "visited" by 1 million users from different locations.

7. Chrome developer tools

This is a website performance audit tool. It provides information about aspects of the page that need to be improved and shows lines of CSS code where it is inefficient.

Conclusions.

The tools we describe have different levels of sophistication. Some are very simple, designed for non-specialists, while others do not provide information in a very accurate way. Depending on your individual level of knowledge, we encourage you to use a tool that is tailored to your needs. In fact, most of the tools described provide very similar page load speed data, but the presentation and level of sophistication differ.

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